The present invention relates to a flexible decorative emblem having among other uses customizing automobile surfaces such as the side body, hood, wheel covers and the like and displaying a manufacturer's name or trademark on an automobile or an appliance housing.
Decorative emblems are used in a number of industries for displaying the trade name, trademark or other indicia of a manufacture as well as in novelty items such as key rings, belt buckels and the like where their role is primarily ornamentation. Years ago decorative emblems were formed from vitreous enamel which gave the emblem a glass-like appearance and protected the emblem against weathering. More recently, such emblems have been prepared using plastic in place of the old enamels. For example, Loew, U.S. Pat. No. 3,654,062 discloses an injection molding process for forming a decorative mylar facing.
Waugh, U.S. Pat. No. 4,100,010 discloses a plastic-capped decorative emblem which is formed by casting a polyurethane composition onto the indicia-bearing surface of a decorative foil disc. By holding the disc in a flat, horizontal position and using the appropriate casting techniques, the polyurethane flows to the edge of the disc, stops and builds a positive meniscus, which when cured provides an impact and weather resistant glass-like cap. Reed, U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,654 and Reed, U.S. Pat. No. 4,259,388 disclose plastic-capped emblems formed by casting an uncured plastic composition onto a substrate such as a vinyl or polyester film to form a cap which is cured by irradiation.
Decorative emblems prepared using the teachings of the aforementioned patents are typically coated on the back side with a pressure sensitive adhesive and either applied directly to the surface they are designed to adorn or inserted into a base member or bezel and then attached to the surface. In the former case, if the plastic cap is formed from a material which is flexible when cured, the shape can conform to curved non-planar surfaces. In the latter case, however, the base members which have previously been used have been too rigid to mount the emblem on non-planar surfaces. For example, even when non-planar surfaces such as automobile side bodies and hoods are massed produced, there are variations in the surfaces which make it difficult to obtain good adherenece of ornamentation even when that ornamentation has been molded to have the same curvature as the non-planar surface. As a result, the use of these bezel-mounted emblems has been restricted to flat, substantially planar surfaces. Furthermore, due to their rigidity there has been a tendency for the latter emblems to break upon impact.
Although the base member has limited the usefulness of emblems including the same, the base member serves to frame the capped indicia and many manufacturers use a crest or medallion-like design as part of their trademark and require the base member to faithfully reproduce the trademark. Hence, there is a need for a decorative emblem in which a plastic-capped inlay is retained in a base member and which can conform to non-planar surfaces and resist impact.